Posts Tagged ‘Britain’

Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, says a new counter-terrorism law proposed in Britain shows that political leaders have begun to realize the scale of the threat the world is facing.

Kantor had high praise for the “Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill” in a speech at a policy conference in Westminster, during an appearance alongside Home Secretary Amber Rudd. “Terrorists and extremists have created networks in our countries, enclaves in our cities, outposts on social media. They are planning and plotting their next barbarous acts,” he said said at the Jewish News-BICOM Policy Conference.

“Neither external radicalization nor internal radicalization is new, but the virulence of both has increased in recent years. They now feed off each other. Thankfully, political leaders have begun to realize the scale of the threat that we are facing,” Kantor said. “The British Government’s Counter Extremism Bill, in turn, is a robust response to the reality that terrorism does not exist in a vacuum and that we must look to blunt its influence in our societies.” In his address to Members of Parliament and Peers, faith leaders, trade union leaders, diplomats, policy analysts, journalists, commentators and other officials, Kantor also had some words of caution for leaders in Europe. “Yet we are still waiting for the concrete steps that European democracies must take in this vital fight for their own survival,” he warned.

“While we must respond firmly to those who seek our destruction, we must act just as decisively in depriving the terrorists of the means to spread their hateful messages on social media,” Kantor said. “No democracy needs to demonstrate its vitality through its destruction. This must be the guiding principle for all those who live under constant threat of terrorism, whether in the UK, Europe or Israel.”

Other speakers at the event included former US Middle East Envoy Ambassador Dennis Ross; Israeli Labour Party leader Isaac Herzog MK; Home Secretary Amber Rudd MP; Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Special Envoy for Public Diplomacy & former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren MK; The Ambassador of Israel to the UK and former Spokesperson for PM Netanyahu Mark Regev; The Ambassador of Jordan to the UK Mazen Houmoud; Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Tobias Ellwood MP.

On Tuesday, Israel and others around the world marked the vote by the United Nations that approved a partition plan leading to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel.

A ceremony to be held Tuesday night at the British Parliament will also mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, according to Israel Radio. Among the attendees are British lawmakers and Israeli Ambassador to Britain, Mark Regev.

69 yrs ago, 33 nations voted for the partition plan,leading to establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.

“If Palestinians had agreed in 1947 to two states for two peoples, then they would be about to celebrate 69 years of their own independence too,” Regev pointed out earlier Tuesday in a post on the Twitter social networking site.

Severe and unexpected turbulence on United Airlines Flight #880 from Houston to London’s Heathrow Airport left 10 passengers and two crew members so badly injured they required hospitalization in Ireland.

The pilot was forced to make an emergency landing early Wednesday morning at Shannon Airport in Ireland, where the injured were taken to University Hospital in Limerick for treatment, officials said.

The Boeing 767, carrying 207 passengers, landed safely at 5:55 a.m. local time, with ambulances on hand to meet the flight on the tarmac. “All have since been discharged, except for one of our flight attendants,” the airline said in a statement.

A Colorado business passenger told NBC News, “Things flew all over the cabin and kitchen area. One attendant [cracked] the side of her head and was bleeding.” He added that his own shoulders were “really really hurting from grabbing on to the arm rest during those altitude declines.”

Israel is to be represented next month at the international qualifier for next year’s World Baseball Classic in Brooklyn, New York, against Brazil, Britain and Pakistan.

A number of players from the Major League will represent the Jewish State, including former All-Star pitcher Jason Marquis, former Mets infielder Ike Davis, and Craig Breslow, a player for the Red Sox in their 2013 World Series title.

If Israel qualifies for the WBC, the roster will likely include the greatest collection of Jewish ballplayers on one team in the history of the game, ever.

Barely a year before the 100th anniversary of the issuing of the Balfour Declaration, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is hoping to force the United Kingdom to withdraw, renounce or rewrite the document that called for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

As he watches the rapid, vibrant growth of the Jewish State and the soaring corruption and failures of the PA government – despite billions of dollars pumped in by foreign governments – Abbas has now decided to sue the British government over the Balfour Declaration.

According to Daoud Kuttab, a former Ferris professor at Princeton University, Abbas is “said to have requested in Nawqshod Arab League to help sue britain’s (sic) for Balfour’s declaration.”

Abbas is no novice to rewriting history. He is a longtime Holocaust denier who cleverly acknowledges the “unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation,” as he told Haaretz in 2003,” but whose doctoral dissertation simply blames the Zionist Jews for the demise of their European brethren.

Entitled “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism,” Abbas wrote a conspiracy theory about the Holocaust, opining that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in order to inspire more immigration to Palestine.

“The Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule in order to around the government’s hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.” Abbas contends in the book that the Zionists were the Nazis’ “basic partner in crime.”

On November 17, 1917, the British government published a letter written by Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour, addressed to Lord Rothschild, endorsing the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine. The text of the letter read as follows:

I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Conservative Members of the British Parliament gave outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron a standing ovation Wednesday as he completed his final session of Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons. Even some of the Opposition relented with applause.

Cameron has, by and large, enjoyed a positive relationship with Israel and with top Israeli government officials.

“I was the future once,” he told them — a reference to a remark he once made when addressing then-Prime Minister Tony Blair (“He was the future once”) in his first PMQ session as head of the Tory party.

Cameron was photographed with his wife and three young children outside the famous “black door” of Number 10 Downing Street after the session. He said he believed his six-year tenure had left England “much stronger” with an “immeasurably stronger” economy, a reduced deficit, increased international aid spending and reduced National Health Service waiting lists. He spoke with pride about having introduced gay marriage and paid tribute to his wife, who he said “kept [him] vaguely sane.”

Cameron’s successor, former Interior Minister Theresa May, vowed to “build a better Britain, not just for the privileged few,” upon taking office Wednesday afternoon. She kissed the hand of Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace soon after a similar ceremony had taken place with the now-former prime minister.

May spoke of her determination to cement the bond between Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and promised to “rise to the challenge” of forging a “bold new positive role” for the UK in the world after negotiating the exit of the UK from the European Union.

The new prime minister emphasized her intention to serve as a “One Nation” leader, representing all voters and not just the elite and the business world.

May is the country’s second female prime minister, and the first woman to serve in the post since Margaret Thatcher.